M3GAN 2.0 review
M3GAN turns its back on what made it a phenomenon to deliver a message it doesn’t even understand.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
M3GAN 2.0
Directed by Gerard Johnstone
Screenplay by Gerard Johnstone
Starring Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Ivanna Sakho and Jemaine Clement
M3GAN 2.0 Review
M3GAN was a surprise hit when it hit theaters nationwide in early January 2023. It’s not a surprise that it made money despite being dumped in a notoriously slow part of the year…horror movies often overdeliver on their projections. What was a surprise, however, is the degree to which it succeeded. The 12 million dollar killer doll movie brought home over 180 million dollars at the box office. A clever marketing campaign certainly helped. Word of mouth for the fun PG-13 affair didn’t hurt either. Unsurprisingly, Blumhouse saw a franchise. Equally unsurprisingly…they saw an iconic star.
That’s where the issues with M3GAN 2.0 probably started. Look, it’s no surprise to see the antagonist inevitably become the star of its horror franchise. Freddy Krueger, Chucky, Jason Voorhees…it eventually happens no matter what you do. It’s rare, however, to see a franchise so purposefully turn a character to the degree that M3GAN 2.0 wants to. It feels forced. What made those other examples work is that their turns happened more naturally. By audience demand. M3GAN is the hero now. Which leads us to the next issue that M3GAN 2.0 has to deal with.
There is a lot of messaging going on in this movie. More than you’d expect from a story that never seems certain what it wants to say about anything. On the surface…the original was an anti-AI story. Something that perfectly fit its killer doll horror movie adventure. M3GAN 2.0 is both pro and anti AI. It believes that, left unchecked, AI will destroy the world. It also believes that we can teach it to…maybe not do that? Seriously…that is the conclusion that M3GAN 2.0 comes to about its own question. Maybe. A character literally says…hey maybe it will work out better if we teach it to like us. It’s the kind of bubblegum philosophy that you’d get from a 5th grader asked how to make a computer like you.
And it comes at a cost. M3GAN 2.0 isn’t a horror movie. It doesn’t want you to be afraid of technological advancements this time around. Even though the death toll is far larger here than in the original…it’s all going to be ok if we just…work together. Maybe. M3GAN 2.0 is twenty minutes longer than it should be. Most of that time is full of techno jargon that sounds cool until you realize that the script doesn’t know what it’s saying about the topics it’s trying to explain. M3GAN 2.0 is a much bigger movie than M3GAN. It has a lot more to say…almost none of which works as more than a guess. The answer to the horrors of the original boiled down to…let’s try to make it like us, I guess?
When our podcast sat down for a watch-along of the original movie…I brought up that Gemma (Allison Williams) was being too hard on herself throughout the story. She feels like she’s failing because she struggles to make a connection with her adopted niece Cady (Violet McGraw). Now…Gemma does do a poor job a lot of the time…but this specific criticism always felt misplaced. It’s been a couple weeks at most and Cady is alive and well. She’s not going to get over the traumatic event of losing her parents that quickly. What’s important was for Gemma to be there…not that she immediately form an emotional connection. M3GAN 2.0 addresses this specific point head on. Unfortunately, Gemma doesn’t figure any of this out for herself. She has to be told. By the very AI who tried to kill her in the last movie. The messaging is exactly this messy.
600 words in is probably the time to say that M3GAN 2.0 isn’t a bad movie. It’s full of frustrating choices and soapbox speeches that don’t hold up to a second thought…but it’s still kind of entertaining. It’s a fast-paced movie with a lot of action scenes. Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno) is the evil AI payoff from the first film’s code stealing B-plot. She’s pretty awesome. There’s plenty of PG-13 violence to be had. If you’ve seen the trailers for M3GAN 2.0 it delivers exactly what you expect it too. A far cry from the horror icon created by the first film. Time will tell if turning its back on what brought it to the dance will pay off. The attempt to pivot to pure sci-fi action comedy works better here than it did for, say, Happy Death Day 2 U…but neither sequel attempt delivered on the promise of their original. Strangely, seemingly, on purpose.
Scare Value
M3GAN 2.0 isn’t a bad movie by any stretch. It’s a mostly entertaining, if overly long, action sci-fi movie. Bigger in scope than the surprise smash hit original. Bigger isn’t always better, however. While the sci-fi jargon and future tech gets more interesting the closer it comes to reality…M3GAN 2.0 doesn’t make as convincing an argument as it thinks it does. A message that works better as a horror story anyway.
2.5/5
M3GAN 2.0 Link
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